Stories of Arda Home Page
About Us News Resources Login Become a member Help Search
swiss replica watches replica watches uk Replica Rolex DateJust Watches

Under the Trees of Greenwood the Great  by MarigoldG

Making Merry

During the High Summer of 1423 SR, word came from Legolas Greenleaf that he would soon journey to his father's Realm and the esteemed hobbits of The Shire, Meriadoc, son of Saradoc, Peregrin, son of Paladin and Samwise, companion of the Ringbearer, would be most welcome to join him.

Merry and Pippin accepted with delight, although Sam was busy with re-planting the Shire and sowing seed of another kind. The cousins set off to follow in the footsteps of Bilbo and by late Autumn found themselves in Greenwood the Great, for so it was now called, and the company was amongst the best they had ever partied with...

Merry threw himself out of the circle of dancers with a laughing gasp and caught up his goblet, once more miraculously filled to the brim with the spicy golden wine he had loved since his first sip. His plate too was mysteriously filled again with his favourite dainties; mushroom puffs, tiny, perfect tomatoes, smoky sausages, strips of glazed venison, apple slices tasting as sweet as honey, creamy-flavoured nutmeats from the far south. 'It's Magick!' he thought, amazed, and he was quite serious.

He could hear Pippin’s enthusiastic singing mingling with the clear high voices of the spinning, dancing elves, though how his cousin knew the words Merry could not say. Truthfully he even seemed to know them himself, for he too was singing. Magick again!

His cousin danced by, arms outspread. Catching Merry’s eye, Pippin, in his element, laughed in sheer delight and abandon. The starshine and firelight reflected off his cousin’s radiant face as he stamped and whirled, and off the fair skin and bright jewels of the twirling elves. All of the dancers, Pippin included, or maybe especially Pippin, seemed as though they belonged to a different world entirely.

Merry laughed too, no less delightedly, knowing that he too belonged, for this night, to that other world himself.

Without warning his mind fled to the memory of Bilbo and his dwarves, excluded from an enchanted circle like this one so long ago. Merry had thought that Bilbo’s descriptions of the sounds and smells of festivities were merely an embellished part of the old hobbit’s tale but now, as one of the privileged revellers, Merry could only imagine how awful it had been, out there in the dark, starving for food and cheer.

Suddenly Merry became afraid that the edges of the circle might change, that he might abruptly find himself excluded and outside the warmth of the firelight. The Magick was suddenly too real for it to even be real, or perhaps just too real to be borne, at least, to Merry’s logical Brandybuck mind.

For one heart stopping moment Merry feared that his hosts would disappear, along with Pippin, who clearly belonged, with his song, and crown of flowers and autumn leaves, the ivy curled about his wrists and ankles. He, Meriadoc Brandybuck, would be the one stumbling through the forest in the dark, making mad dashes towards firelight and sounds of joy that would disappear when he drew near. The party would go on forever, and he would be forever lost in the dark, alone.

Suddenly the laughing dancers swooped from the circle, pulling him to his feet and back into the swirling throng. There across the circle was Pippin, Legolas near him, and others he had come to know. Merry forgot his fear and doubts as if they had never been. He tilted up his own crown from where it had fallen to cover his eyes and caught the offered hands of his neighbours, and threw himself full into that other world. This night, he, Meriadoc Brandybuck, was Magick!





        

Next >>

Leave Review
Home     Search     Chapter List